Public Ledger (Philadelphia)
Encyclopedia
The Public Ledger was a daily newspaper
in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
published from March 25, 1836 to January 1942. Its motto was "Virtue Liberty and Independence". For a time, it was Philadelphia's most popular newspaper, but circulation declined in the mid-1930s.
, Arunah S. Abell
, and Azariah H. Simmons, and edited by Swain, the Public Ledger was the first penny paper in Philadelphia. At that time most papers sold for five cents (equal to $ today) or more, a relatively high price which limited their appeal to only the reasonably well-off. Swain and Abell drew on the success of the New York Herald, one of the first penny papers and decided to use a one cent cover price to appeal to a broad audience. They mimicked the Herald's use of bold headlines to draw sales. The formula was a success and the Ledger posted a circulation of 15,000 in 1840, growing to 40,000 a decade later. To put this into perspective, the entire circulation of all newspapers in Philadelphia was estimated at only 8,000 when the Ledger was founded.
The Ledger was a technological innovator as well. It was the first daily to make use of a pony express
, and among the first papers to use the electromagnetic telegraph. From 1846, it was printed on the first rotary printing press
.
By the early 1860s, The Ledger was a money-losing operation, squeezed by rising paper and printing costs. It had lost circulation by supporting the Copperhead Policy
of opposing the American Civil War
and advocating an immediate peace settlement with the Confederate States. Most readers in Philadelphia at the time supported the Union. Publishers were reluctant to increase the one-cent subscription cost to cover the actual costs of production in the face of declining circulation. In December 1864, the paper was sold to George William Childs
and Anthony J. Drexel for a reported $20,000 (equal to $ today).
Childs's efforts bore fruit and the Ledger became one of the most influential journals in the country. Circulation growth led the firm to outgrow its facilities, and in 1866 Childs bought property at Sixth and Chestnut Streets in Philadelphia and constructed the Public Ledger Building. Designed by architect John McArthur, Jr.
, at the building's corner Childs installed a larger-than-life-sized statue of Benjamin Franklin
by Joseph A. Bailly
(1825–1883).
The quality and profitability of the Ledger improved dramatically. By 1894, The New York Times described it as "...the finest newspaper office in the country." Toward the end of Child's association, it was estimated that the Ledger was generating profits of approximately $500,000 per year.
In 1870, Mark Twain
, in his column for The Galaxy, mocked the Ledger for its rhyming obituaries in a piece entitled "Post-Mortem Poetry":
owner Adolph Ochs bought the paper from Drexel's estate for a reported $2.25 million, merged in the Philadelphia Times (which he had bought the previous year), and installed his brother George
as editor. George remained editor until 1914, two years after Curtis bought the publication.
purchased the paper from Ochs for $2 million and hired his step son-in-law John Charles Martin
as editor. Curtis was owner of the Ladies Home Journal and the Saturday Evening Post. His strategy in buying the paper was to establish it as Philadelphia's premier newspaper, a plan he executed by buying and closing several competing papers; the Evening Telegraph and the North American among them. Philadelphia went from a peak of 13 papers in 1900 to only seven in 1920, a time when the newspaper industry in American was consolidating in general.
Under Curtis' ownership the Ledger's already conservative presentation grew even more so. The paper avoided bold headlines and seldom printed photographs on the front page. The conservative approach of the Ledger's layout has been compared with the Wall Street Journal or New York Times today. Curtis built the Ledger's foreign news service and syndicated it to other papers. Former President William Howard Taft
was on staff as an editorial contributor from 1918 to 1921. To broaden the market, and compete against The Evening Bulletin, in 1914 Curtis began publishing the Evening Public Ledger, a bolder paper designed to appeal to a broader public.
Competitively, the Ledger suffered from an ascendant The Evening Bulletin, which under publisher William L. McLean grew in size from 12 pages in 1900 to 28 pages in 1920, and from circulation of 6,000 to a leadership position of over 500,000 readers in the same time. The Bulletin's bolder and more commercial approach attracted additional advertising which in turn drew more readers. Advertising, which comprised only 1/3 of the Bulletin in 1900 grew to nearly 3/4 of its pages in 1920. At the same time the circulation at the Ledger was stagnant.
Curtis built a new Public Ledger Building (1921) on the same site as the old, designed in the Georgian Revival
style by Horace Trumbauer
. The paper made money in the 1920s, but saw circulation fall in half and profits disappear with the Great Depression
. Some observers criticize the paper for an indistinct editorial policy which may have alienated readers. On the one hand they endorsed reform politicians, while on the other hand the paper was decidedly anti-labor. The paper ran anti-union advertisements during the 1919 Amalgamated Clothing Workers strike, but ran no pro-strike ads.
Despite the circulation slump caused by the depression, Curtis expanded yet again by buying the Philadelphia Inquirer in 1930 for $18 million, but did not consolidate the two franchises. When Curtis died in 1933 it was estimated that he had lost $30 million on his newspaper ventures, with little to show for the investment. In 1934, the Ledger was absorbed into the Inquirer and management was assumed by the son-in-law of the second Mrs Curtis, John C. Martin, General Manager of Curtis-Martin Newspapers.
(also held by the heirs of Curtis), but the paper continued an independent life as the Evening Public Ledger. John Martin was forced out of the management of the Evening Ledger in 1939, and control was assumed by Cary W. Bok, Cyrus Curtis's younger grandson. Bok spent two years trying to make the paper pay without success. In 1941, the Evening Public Ledger was sold to Robert Cresswell, formerly of the New York Herald Tribune
. Mounting debts brought on a court-ordered liquidation, and the paper ceased publication in January, 1942.
, as an article with the title, "Red Bible". The excerpts from The Protocols, a text proposing the existence of a Jewish plot to take over the world, had all references to the purported Jewish authorship removed and was re-cast as a Bolshevist manifesto. The author of the articles was Carl W. Ackerman
, who subsequently became the head of the journalism
department at Columbia University
.
received a Pulitzer Prize for correspondence while working at the Ledger for a series of articles on the Five Year Plan in the Soviet Union
.
Newspaper
A newspaper is a scheduled publication containing news of current events, informative articles, diverse features and advertising. It usually is printed on relatively inexpensive, low-grade paper such as newsprint. By 2007, there were 6580 daily newspapers in the world selling 395 million copies a...
in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
Pennsylvania
The Commonwealth of Pennsylvania is a U.S. state that is located in the Northeastern and Mid-Atlantic regions of the United States. The state borders Delaware and Maryland to the south, West Virginia to the southwest, Ohio to the west, New York and Ontario, Canada, to the north, and New Jersey to...
published from March 25, 1836 to January 1942. Its motto was "Virtue Liberty and Independence". For a time, it was Philadelphia's most popular newspaper, but circulation declined in the mid-1930s.
Early history
Founded by William Moseley SwainWilliam Moseley Swain
William Moseley Swain was an American journalist and businessman....
, Arunah S. Abell
Arunah Shepherdson Abell
Arunah Shepherdson Abell was an American publisher and philanthropist. Born in Rhode Island, Abell learned the newspaper business as an apprentice at the Providence Patriot. After stints with newspapers in New York City and Boston, he co-founded the Philadelphia Public Ledger and later founded the...
, and Azariah H. Simmons, and edited by Swain, the Public Ledger was the first penny paper in Philadelphia. At that time most papers sold for five cents (equal to $ today) or more, a relatively high price which limited their appeal to only the reasonably well-off. Swain and Abell drew on the success of the New York Herald, one of the first penny papers and decided to use a one cent cover price to appeal to a broad audience. They mimicked the Herald's use of bold headlines to draw sales. The formula was a success and the Ledger posted a circulation of 15,000 in 1840, growing to 40,000 a decade later. To put this into perspective, the entire circulation of all newspapers in Philadelphia was estimated at only 8,000 when the Ledger was founded.
The Ledger was a technological innovator as well. It was the first daily to make use of a pony express
Pony Express
The Pony Express was a fast mail service crossing the Great Plains, the Rocky Mountains, and the High Sierra from St. Joseph, Missouri, to Sacramento, California, from April 3, 1860 to October 1861...
, and among the first papers to use the electromagnetic telegraph. From 1846, it was printed on the first rotary printing press
Rotary printing press
A rotary printing press is a printing press in which the images to be printed are curved around a cylinder. Printing can be done on large number of substrates, including paper, cardboard, and plastic. Substrates can be sheet feed or unwound on a continuous roll through the press to be printed and...
.
By the early 1860s, The Ledger was a money-losing operation, squeezed by rising paper and printing costs. It had lost circulation by supporting the Copperhead Policy
Copperheads (politics)
The Copperheads were a vocal group of Democrats in the Northern United States who opposed the American Civil War, wanting an immediate peace settlement with the Confederates. Republicans started calling anti-war Democrats "Copperheads," likening them to the venomous snake...
of opposing the American Civil War
American Civil War
The American Civil War was a civil war fought in the United States of America. In response to the election of Abraham Lincoln as President of the United States, 11 southern slave states declared their secession from the United States and formed the Confederate States of America ; the other 25...
and advocating an immediate peace settlement with the Confederate States. Most readers in Philadelphia at the time supported the Union. Publishers were reluctant to increase the one-cent subscription cost to cover the actual costs of production in the face of declining circulation. In December 1864, the paper was sold to George William Childs
George William Childs
George William Childs was an American publisher who co-owned the Philadelphia Public Ledger newspaper with financier Anthony Joseph Drexel.-Early life:...
and Anthony J. Drexel for a reported $20,000 (equal to $ today).
The Childs era
Upon buying the paper Childs completely changed its policy and methods. He changed the editorial policy to the Loyalist (Union) line, raised advertising rates, and he doubled the cover price to two cents. After an initial drop, circulation rebounded and the paper resumed profitability. Childs was intimately involved in all operations of the paper, from the press room to the composing room, and he intentionally upgraded the quality of advertisements appearing in the publication to suit a higher end readership.Childs's efforts bore fruit and the Ledger became one of the most influential journals in the country. Circulation growth led the firm to outgrow its facilities, and in 1866 Childs bought property at Sixth and Chestnut Streets in Philadelphia and constructed the Public Ledger Building. Designed by architect John McArthur, Jr.
John McArthur, Jr.
John McArthur Jr was a prominent American architect practicing from Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Designer of some of the city's most ambitious buildings of the Civil War era, few of his works survive...
, at the building's corner Childs installed a larger-than-life-sized statue of Benjamin Franklin
Benjamin Franklin
Dr. Benjamin Franklin was one of the Founding Fathers of the United States. A noted polymath, Franklin was a leading author, printer, political theorist, politician, postmaster, scientist, musician, inventor, satirist, civic activist, statesman, and diplomat...
by Joseph A. Bailly
Joseph A. Bailly
Joseph Alexis Bailly was a French-born American sculptor who spent most of his career in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. He taught briefly at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, which has a collection of his sculpture...
(1825–1883).
The quality and profitability of the Ledger improved dramatically. By 1894, The New York Times described it as "...the finest newspaper office in the country." Toward the end of Child's association, it was estimated that the Ledger was generating profits of approximately $500,000 per year.
In 1870, Mark Twain
Mark Twain
Samuel Langhorne Clemens , better known by his pen name Mark Twain, was an American author and humorist...
, in his column for The Galaxy, mocked the Ledger for its rhyming obituaries in a piece entitled "Post-Mortem Poetry":
The Ochs era
In 1902, The New York TimesThe New York Times
The New York Times is an American daily newspaper founded and continuously published in New York City since 1851. The New York Times has won 106 Pulitzer Prizes, the most of any news organization...
owner Adolph Ochs bought the paper from Drexel's estate for a reported $2.25 million, merged in the Philadelphia Times (which he had bought the previous year), and installed his brother George
George Oakes
George Washington Ochs Oakes was an American journalist. Born George Washington Ochs, he legally added the surname "Oakes" in 1915 out of outrage at the sinking of the Lusitania by a German U-boat.-Journalism career:Ochs was born to German-Jewish immigrants, Julius and Bertha Levy Ochs, in...
as editor. George remained editor until 1914, two years after Curtis bought the publication.
The Curtis era
In 1913, Cyrus CurtisCyrus Hermann Kotzschmar Curtis
Cyrus Hermann Kotzschmar Curtis was an American publisher of magazines and newspapers, including the Ladies' Home Journal and the Saturday Evening Post.-Biography:...
purchased the paper from Ochs for $2 million and hired his step son-in-law John Charles Martin
John Charles Martin
John Charles Martin was newspaper publisher who, beginning in 1913, ran the newspapers purchased by his step father-in-law Cyrus Curtis, including the Public Ledger, the New York Evening Post, the Philadelphia Inquirer and four others...
as editor. Curtis was owner of the Ladies Home Journal and the Saturday Evening Post. His strategy in buying the paper was to establish it as Philadelphia's premier newspaper, a plan he executed by buying and closing several competing papers; the Evening Telegraph and the North American among them. Philadelphia went from a peak of 13 papers in 1900 to only seven in 1920, a time when the newspaper industry in American was consolidating in general.
Under Curtis' ownership the Ledger's already conservative presentation grew even more so. The paper avoided bold headlines and seldom printed photographs on the front page. The conservative approach of the Ledger's layout has been compared with the Wall Street Journal or New York Times today. Curtis built the Ledger's foreign news service and syndicated it to other papers. Former President William Howard Taft
William Howard Taft
William Howard Taft was the 27th President of the United States and later the tenth Chief Justice of the United States...
was on staff as an editorial contributor from 1918 to 1921. To broaden the market, and compete against The Evening Bulletin, in 1914 Curtis began publishing the Evening Public Ledger, a bolder paper designed to appeal to a broader public.
Competitively, the Ledger suffered from an ascendant The Evening Bulletin, which under publisher William L. McLean grew in size from 12 pages in 1900 to 28 pages in 1920, and from circulation of 6,000 to a leadership position of over 500,000 readers in the same time. The Bulletin's bolder and more commercial approach attracted additional advertising which in turn drew more readers. Advertising, which comprised only 1/3 of the Bulletin in 1900 grew to nearly 3/4 of its pages in 1920. At the same time the circulation at the Ledger was stagnant.
Curtis built a new Public Ledger Building (1921) on the same site as the old, designed in the Georgian Revival
Georgian architecture
Georgian architecture is the name given in most English-speaking countries to the set of architectural styles current between 1720 and 1840. It is eponymous for the first four British monarchs of the House of Hanover—George I of Great Britain, George II of Great Britain, George III of the United...
style by Horace Trumbauer
Horace Trumbauer
Horace Trumbauer was a prominent American architect of the Gilded Age, known for designing residential manors for the wealthy. Later in his career he also designed hotels, office buildings, and much of the campus of Duke University...
. The paper made money in the 1920s, but saw circulation fall in half and profits disappear with the Great Depression
Great Depression
The Great Depression was a severe worldwide economic depression in the decade preceding World War II. The timing of the Great Depression varied across nations, but in most countries it started in about 1929 and lasted until the late 1930s or early 1940s...
. Some observers criticize the paper for an indistinct editorial policy which may have alienated readers. On the one hand they endorsed reform politicians, while on the other hand the paper was decidedly anti-labor. The paper ran anti-union advertisements during the 1919 Amalgamated Clothing Workers strike, but ran no pro-strike ads.
Despite the circulation slump caused by the depression, Curtis expanded yet again by buying the Philadelphia Inquirer in 1930 for $18 million, but did not consolidate the two franchises. When Curtis died in 1933 it was estimated that he had lost $30 million on his newspaper ventures, with little to show for the investment. In 1934, the Ledger was absorbed into the Inquirer and management was assumed by the son-in-law of the second Mrs Curtis, John C. Martin, General Manager of Curtis-Martin Newspapers.
The final years
On April 16, 1934, the morning and Sunday editions were merged into The Philadelphia InquirerThe Philadelphia Inquirer
The Philadelphia Inquirer is a morning daily newspaper that serves the Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, metropolitan area of the United States. The newspaper was founded by John R. Walker and John Norvell in June 1829 as The Pennsylvania Inquirer and is the third-oldest surviving daily newspaper in the...
(also held by the heirs of Curtis), but the paper continued an independent life as the Evening Public Ledger. John Martin was forced out of the management of the Evening Ledger in 1939, and control was assumed by Cary W. Bok, Cyrus Curtis's younger grandson. Bok spent two years trying to make the paper pay without success. In 1941, the Evening Public Ledger was sold to Robert Cresswell, formerly of the New York Herald Tribune
New York Herald Tribune
The New York Herald Tribune was a daily newspaper created in 1924 when the New York Tribune acquired the New York Herald.Other predecessors, which had earlier merged into the New York Tribune, included the original The New Yorker newsweekly , and the Whig Party's Log Cabin.The paper was home to...
. Mounting debts brought on a court-ordered liquidation, and the paper ceased publication in January, 1942.
"The Protocols of the Elders of Zion" and Bolshevism
On October 27 and October 28, 1919, the Public Ledger published excerpts from - and the first published English language translation of - The Protocols of the Elders of ZionThe Protocols of the Elders of Zion
The Protocols of the Elders of Zion is a fraudulent, antisemitic text purporting to describe a Jewish plan for achieving global domination. It was first published in Russia in 1903, translated into multiple languages, and disseminated internationally in the early part of the twentieth century...
, as an article with the title, "Red Bible". The excerpts from The Protocols, a text proposing the existence of a Jewish plot to take over the world, had all references to the purported Jewish authorship removed and was re-cast as a Bolshevist manifesto. The author of the articles was Carl W. Ackerman
Carl W. Ackerman
Carl William Ackerman was a journalist and author. He graduated from Earlham College and worked as a correspondent in World War I with the United Press. However, he first received public attention as the author of "Germany, The Next Republic?", a book that discussed the possibility of a successful...
, who subsequently became the head of the journalism
Journalism
Journalism is the practice of investigation and reporting of events, issues and trends to a broad audience in a timely fashion. Though there are many variations of journalism, the ideal is to inform the intended audience. Along with covering organizations and institutions such as government and...
department at Columbia University
Columbia University
Columbia University in the City of New York is a private, Ivy League university in Manhattan, New York City. Columbia is the oldest institution of higher learning in the state of New York, the fifth oldest in the United States, and one of the country's nine Colonial Colleges founded before the...
.
Awards
In 1931 reporter Hubert Renfro KnickerbockerHubert Renfro Knickerbocker
Hubert Renfro Knickerbocker was an American writer and journalist. He was nicknamed "Red" Knickerbocker from the color of his hair....
received a Pulitzer Prize for correspondence while working at the Ledger for a series of articles on the Five Year Plan in the Soviet Union
Soviet Union
The Soviet Union , officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics , was a constitutionally socialist state that existed in Eurasia between 1922 and 1991....
.
Known editors
- William M. Swain
- William Henry FryWilliam Henry FryFor the woodcarver and gilder, see William H. Fry.William Henry Fry was a pioneering American composer, music critic, and journalist. Fry was the first person born in the United States to write for a large symphony orchestra, and the first to compose a publicly performed opera...
(1844–1846) - George OakesGeorge OakesGeorge Washington Ochs Oakes was an American journalist. Born George Washington Ochs, he legally added the surname "Oakes" in 1915 out of outrage at the sinking of the Lusitania by a German U-boat.-Journalism career:Ochs was born to German-Jewish immigrants, Julius and Bertha Levy Ochs, in...
- Randolph Marshall (1918)
- Charles Munro Morrison (1930–1939, 1941)
- John McLaughlin
- Bob Maxwell
External links
- Library of Congress: Chronicling America: Evening Public Ledger
- University of Villanova: Falvey Library: Philadelphia's Public Ledger
- Historical Society of Pennsylvania: Document: Excerpts from the Philadelphia Public Ledger Muckle was business manager of the Public Ledger about 50 years.